Smith, Tara Bray 1970–

PERSONAL: Born 1970, in HI; daughter of Karen Morgan. Education: Dartmouth College, received degree; Columbia University, M.F.A., 2003.

ADDRESSES: Home—Brooklyn, NY. Agent—Alexis Welby, Senior Publicist, Simon & Schuster, 1230 6th Ave., 12th Fl., New York, NY 10020. E-mail—tara@tarabraysmith.com.

CAREER: Writer.

WRITINGS:

West of Then: A Mother, a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise (memoir), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of Why Won't the Landlord Take Visa?: The Princeton Review's Crash Course to Life after Graduation. Contributor to periodicals, including Granta.

SIDELIGHTS: Tara Bray Smith was born and raised in Hawaii, and in her memoir, West of Then: A Mother, a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise she returns to the islands as a lush but ironic backdrop to the story of her difficult relationship with her mother, Karen Morgan. Bray intertwines a detailed history of Hawaii with the story of her early years and return, as an adult, to Honolulu to find her mother, who disappeared long ago and is feared dead.

West of Then is "a daughter's memoir both appalling and inspiring, in which Tara Bray Smith tells the story of her mother's addiction to drugs," noted reviewer Susanna Moore in Vogue. Bray was born in 1970 into a family with deep local connections. They had long been plantation owners who had once been wealthy business owners with interests in sugar and real estate. Changing economic times and diverse interests of new generations had shuttered the lucrative farms before Smith was born, but the family still retained a sense of being "local nobility," Moore observed. Perhaps worse than the family's reduced fortunes was the drug-fueled atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s that forged Bray's mother's personality. Karen Brewster Morgan was a fifth-generation white Hawaiian, a genuine descendent of the Mayflower, and a physically beautiful women. She was also a heroin addict who was prone to debilitating drug binges and to simply forgetting about her children. Smith was abandoned by Morgan at age seven and was raised by her father and stepmother. Long after reaching adulthood, Smith received a frantic call from a sister who said that their mother had been missing for weeks. With no hesitation, Smith left her life in New York City to search for the homeless, hopeless Morgan.

"The search for her mother is, in truth, a search for herself, and she rebuilds her past by mining her memories" of a contradictory childhood long gone, and a mother's love she still longs for, commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor. "Smith writes with grace of the contradictions of childhood; the confusing rages and humiliations; the longing for order; the delicate pleasures; the misunderstandings occasioned by innocence," Moore observed. She "blends reportorial objectivity with the baring of her soul to sublime effect," concluded Booklist reviewer Carol Haggas.

Smith is also the author of a practical guidebook for new college graduates, Why Won't the Landlord Take Visa?: The Princeton Review's Crash Course to Life after Graduation. The book offers advice for newly minted graduates' thoughts on finding a job, creating a satisfying social life with little money, and adjusting to the demands of life after college.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Carol Haggas, review of West of Then: A Mother a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise, p. 27.

Chicago Tribune, May 1, 2005, Kera Bolonik, "An Elusive Memoirist in Search of a Mother-Daughter Bond," review of West of Then.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2004, review of West of Then, p. 733.

Library Journal, September 15, 2004, Pam Kingsbury, review of West of Then, p. 65.

People, October 18, 2004, Lynne Andriani, review of West of Then, p. 50.

Vogue, October, 2004, Susanna Moore, "A Love Adrift: In a Lyrical Memoir of Her Hawaiian Childhood, Tara Bray Smith Searches for a Mother Who Is All but Lost to Her," review of West of Then, p. 264.

ONLINE

Columbia University Web site, http://www.columbia.edu/ (June 19, 2005), "With Her Debut Book, Tara Bray Smith (SoA, '03) Joins Growing List of Recently Published Columbians."

Tara Bray Smith Home Page, http://www.tarabraysmith.com (June 19, 2005).